A shooting over a parking space at a Tallahassee Walmart marred a Black Friday that otherwise got off to a roaring start with festive shoppers, crowded stores and robust online sales.

Tallahassee police said a man and a woman suffered wounds not considered life threatening. A suspect was being sought.

Kollet Probst, 30, tells the Tallahassee Democrat that she was in the customer service department when a crowd ran into the store from the parking lot and ducked for cover after shots were fired.

Probst says she and other frightened shoppers huddled in a restroom and tried to call 911. Minutes later they emerged and saw the shooting victims, a woman and a man, who were being tended to by police near the front of the store.

Wal-Mart company spokesman Randy Hargrove says the giant retailer was working with police to find the person who fired the shots. "The safety of our customers and associates is always a top priority for us," he says.

Most retailers reported peaceful crowds and strong sales. Black Friday online sales were up 20% over last year, according to IBM Smarter Commerce, which uses its IBM Benchmark to track the websites of more than 500 leading U.S. retailers.

Smarter Commerce reports that 28% of shoppers used their mobile devices to visit retail sites, up 10 percentage points from a year ago. And while the iPad ruled "couch commerce" on Thanksgiving night, the iPhone was winning in stores today. IPhone traffic was at 11.2% of total online traffic at retail sites, vs. 8.9% for iPads.

Danielle Blanchard of Seattle needs no prodding. She says she did all her shopping on her smartphone, calling it the "fastest and warmest way to shop on Black Friday."

To compete with online retailers, brick-and-mortar stores tried to make shopping as convenient as possible for consumers. Many opened earlier Thanksgiving night to draw in shoppers who were unwilling to wait until midnight or the early-morning hours on Friday.

People rush into Macy's as they open at midnight on Friday in NYC.(Photo: Stan Honda, AFP/Getty Images)

This year, Toys R Us opened at 8 p.m., an hour earlier than last year. Sears, which didn't open on Thanksgiving last year, also opened at 8 p.m. Target opened at 9 p.m., three hours earlier than last year.

Toys R Us shoppers, at least those lining up at the retailer's Times Square store, were all smiles in anticipation of the Black Friday sale, says CEO Jerry Storch, who greeted customers at the store.

"It was the happiest and most fun crowd I've ever seen on Black Friday," he says. Once inside, shoppers snatched up the Tabeo kids tablet for $149.99 – they were "flying off the shelf," Storch says. Lego products, the Wii U and the Skylanders: Giants video game were also going fast, he says.

Walmart rang up almost 10 million transactions through midnight as customers picked up bicycles, TVs and video games. That's almost 5,000 items per second, the company says.

At a Walmart in Chantilly, Va., Dan Ziewlinski said his first Black Friday shopping experience was a little overwhelming. He brought his son, Jack, 11, to help him score a 32-inch Emerson TV for Christmas.

"It's a surprise," says Ziewlinski, 47, covering Jack's ears. The two headed over to Walmart after cleaning up Thanksgiving dinner. They decided to buy the TV and an iPad 2.

One group of people benefitting from stores opening earlier Thursday night: those looking to shop Friday. Lines outside Kmart Friday morning were much shorter for the 5 a.m. reopening, after the chain closed briefly at 3 a.m. to restock inventory.

One early Friday shopper at a Kmart in Springfield, Mass.,went home with a new 51-inch TV but left his girlfriend's 2-year-old son behind in the car, police said.

Store security found the boy asleep about 1:30 a.m. The unidentified man, who is facing child-endangerment charges, told police he panicked after losing the boy in the store, then -- inexplicably -- called someone to take him and the TV home.

Mary Stirsman went to the Greenwood Park Mall outside Indianapolis at midnight Friday and again around noon, and says she prefers the early afternoon shopping. "It was just too crowded," she says of her first trip to the mall, adding that shoppers were "throwing sweatshirts up in the air" at Victoria's Secret.

Jackie Fernandez, a retail partner at the consulting firm Deloitte, says "timing is key if you're a consumer." Morning shoppers "might not get the best deals that (retailers) were offering at 9 p.m. last night but ... you can get very good prices, and the traffic level subsides."

Rory Binkowski carries a collection of items while waiting in line to check out at Menards in West Bend, Wis.Nove 23.(Photo: John Ehlke, AP)

Still, malls that opened Friday morning had no shortage of customers. Westfarms in Farmington, Conn., had several hundred people at each entrance when it opened at 6 a.m. Teen apparel and shoes often was the merchandise of choice – several malls reported the longest lines at stores including Hollister, Aeropostale and Foot Locker.

At International Plaza in Tampa, Fla., Urban Outfitters had a line of almost 500 people waiting when the mall opened at 8 a.m.

About 150 of Disney's 220 stores opened at midnight, says Paul Gainer, executive vice president of global Disney Stores. The ones that don't are in malls that can't accommodate the early entrance.

Four years ago, when the chain started the midnight openings, few other stores did. "Now it's really a mall experience where everybody is participating," says Gainer.

Still, Gainer says Disney Stores don't plan to keep pushing back their opening times further into Thanksgiving.

"We feel really good about that midnight opening," he says.

Beyond Tallahassee, there were scattered reports of fights and mob scenes.

Lisa Helder of Gibbstown, N.J., described her trip to a Victoria's Secret to get a free gift bag as a "disastrous nightmare." When the store raised the gates, she says, "You would have thought a pack of wild animals were behind me."

She was pushed to the floor and nearly trampled until another shopper tried to help her up, while her daughter cried and her sister screamed. Once she was up, she started getting shoved again, "by crazy women fighting over items that weren't even on sale."

Not everyone is thrilled with the earlier store openings on Thanksgiving as several retail employee groups are protesting the change.

Employees of retailers, including Target, Walmart and Toys R Us, have started or signed petitions on Change.org for Thanksgiving day off.

Shoppers rush to looking for doorbuster deals at the opening of the Target store in Burbank, Calif., on Thursday.(Photo: Damian Dovarganes, AP)

A New York City-based, union-backed group of retail workers called Retail Action Project planned protests on Thanksgiving in front of several stores, including Ann Taylor, Forever 21 and others that were opening at midnight on Black Friday and earlier.

"It shows that the companies are not valuing their workers. They're looking to their workers to squeeze out more profits," said Carrie Gleason, director of Retail Action Project.

The holiday shopping season is crucial for retailers and the National Retail Federation estimates that holiday sales will rise 4.1% to $586.1 billion this year.

"This is the most optimistic forecast NRF has released since the recession," NRF CEO Mathew Shay said in a statement.

The day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday because it's when retailers traditionally get out of the red and turn a profit for the year.The NRF estimates that up to 147 million shoppers will visit stores and shop online over the Black Friday weekend.

Contributing: David Carrig; John Bacon; Oliver St. John; Associated Press